[busybody]

I bought a Lobster 544 from The Link last September for my daughter's birthday. My whole family uses Virgin network and is on 'Pay as you go', buying limited credit for the children's phones (limits the losses if lost or stolen). Fortunately I invested an extra £20 in the optional 12-month warranty. Within 3 days the handset had the fault described earlier in this thread: she could hear the caller or callee, the other party could not hear her. I returned to The Link store for a full refund only to find that it had closed.

For months I tried to find The Link or the buyer of The Link which had responsibility for its store customers' contracts. Meanwhile my daughter returned to her reliable Sanyo basic non-camera mobile. None of the customer service or support numbers I called repeatedly would accept responsibility for a refund. Eventually I gave up and in June returned the faulty handset to The Tech Guys who are tasked to provide repairs under my extended warranty. TTG reported a 10-day turnround.

Six weeks later I chased them to be told that they did indeed have the faulty handset, that it could not be repaired and that they would send a replacement. On 9 August 2007 we received a Lobster 544L labelled "Virgin Quality Used". By 15 August it had developed exactly the same fault as the first handset - the already-identified "mute" issue. My disabled child is away on a group holiday on the Yorkshire Moors and has been unable to keep in touch with her own phone - although her SIM card did work in somebody else's phone on the Virgin network so the problem is clearly not there.
This morning I have spoken to ten people on nine different customer service lines, ending with The Link Virtual Store. I require a full refund on this phone to enable me to purchase another, reliable model. I am advised to write to: 02 UK Ltd, Complaints Review Service, PO Box 116, Leeds, LS11 5BD. The information given to me by an adviser at The Link Virtual Store is that the department at the end of that address has been establised to "deal with" The Link store customers' contracts. I'll let you know what transpires.

FYI, the IMEI number of the replacement Lobster 544L appears to be a much earlier one than that on the Lobster 544 purchased last September so presumably this is not a 'batch' fault but a design issue. I am surprised that there is no pathway to replace the Lobster 544 with another model when customers have problems since this appears to be a recurrent failure with this phone.